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Tag Archives: obsession

It’s safe to say that by the time we’re adults, we’ve met that certain-someone that’s driven us up the wall — in a good way. You want to do everything for them, you want to make them as happy as can be in every way you can, you wonder what they’re thinking, you wish you could fully express just how much they make you thrilled to be alive…!

Or some such combination of these feelings.

Basically it’s all the normal flutter and glitter of being in love or in lust or in that shiny-new-partner phase with someone. Harmless, well and good. Eventually as we begin to meld into partnership with this person, in whatever it’s form — a serious relationship, an open-ended “thing”, a fling, a marriage, casual dating, etc — we learn more about this person and about ourselves. The strengths and insecurities begin to dance. Some people get scared or angry or whatever and break things off, others realize their love or whatever is solid and want to work on being together, and others are… well … dysfunctional psychopaths.

“If I can’t have you, no one will!” That classique cliche is rooted in some serious psychoemotional issues. Our friends at Enotalone have a very enlightening article, “The Obsessive Love Wheel“, where they detail the way obsessive love relationships progress:

Phase 1 – Attraction Phase: obsessor focuses on looks and wants to rush immediately into a relationship, holding little to no regard for questions of compatibility.

Phase 2 – Anxious Phase: obsessor must be in constant contact with their partner, based off of a deep fear of abandonment, and they begin to distrust their partner. They increasingly try to control their partner.

Phase 3 – Obsessive Phase: obsessor ramps up the control and monitoring behaviors, and develops a kind of tunnel vision, where everything in their life and actions surrounds the relationship they feel that they have with their partner.

These are suggestions for ways to seek help, and not end-all-be-all answers to your unique issues if they are present. Look to your local resources, self-improvement/support groups, therapists, or hotlines for immediate help.

Why do some people break and others yelling a raging FUCK YOU when pressed by the will of someone or something else?

In “Raging Love, for wherever you are“, the main theme of this story is engulfing. Flames engulf, obsessive love can engulf, compulsions, “ticks”, manias and money can engulf. Mia admits that eminent domain is a “soft spot” for her, as she doesn’t consider herself to be as villainous or greedy as her fellow rich-folks. Our friends at Wikipedia describe eminent domain as “is the inherent power of the state to seize acitizen’s private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen’s rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner’s consent.”

The other side of this is something 60 Minutes covered some time ago, where they discuss how the government and private corp’s can also take property for private use. Describing these uses as for the “public good”, the concept and process of eminent domain throws into question all our standard notions of ownership, not to mention how much control we have over developing or building our own environments. In my short story, a once artsy but largely poor neighborhood was slowly being eaten up by condos, in a more standardized and rapid version of “gentrification”, like the type we’ve seen in my native Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. (Some more info on that here, if you’re curious.)

Tomorrow: More stories about exes, breakups, relationships that just won’t die even though they clearly have to, and neat (and safe!) tricks to do with fire. Teehee!

Many of those who’ve read “The Impatient Clock” have come back to me saying it’s almost Lynch-ish in that it doesn’t make much sense (a HIGH compliment in my book!). It’s not a story that I expect anyone to latch on to right away. But because it is one of the deeper stories in the book, I do want people to have the psychoanalytic point of view I came to it with before I wrote it … then you can do what you like with the definition for your own satisfaction. So let’s talk Jung.

The woman that Yona encounters in the so-perfect-it’s-creepy kitchen looks just like Yona once she contorts. Why?

She is, in part, the “shadow“, the psychological theory of the unconscious mind’s harboring of weak, dark, weird or violent instincts. The other, the uncanny, the shadowself, all that exists to counter the normal person and aspects we have in our every day lives. It is a Jungian theory:

“According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to project: turning a personal inferiority into a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. “

In the house, the ShadowYona says that she ate the children Yona fed to her, and Yona will never, ever have them. Yona’s maniacal repression of her own natural instinct for wonder, and her profession’s “distortion” of reality that she grew to resent once reality distorted her own world (via the miscarriage), was so huge and so full that it produced the ShadowYona — an embodiment of shadow and resentment deep enough to turn her own uterus against her. The ShadowYona is what killed the baby Yona lost.

Yes, I am a psychanalysis fan, by the way. Ask me about the crazy paper I wrote analyzing Dead Ringers, Vertigo and Mulholland Drive in college. God I loved that thing.

Some say it’s the same primitive, instinctual urge that feeds the biological clock. Others say that it’s plain psychological illness, and many have attributed baby stealing to Asperger’s (of all things…). There’s also simply what I call the “psychology of lack”; the feeling of suddenly not having from previously having. It’s the thing that caves you in after a bad breakup, or, I can only imagine, after something like a miscarriage. The woman who murdered the pregnany woman in Pennsylvania had suffered a miscarriage only months before and hadn’t told her mother. She planned on stealing a baby and keeping the miscarriage a secret so that her mother wouldn’t “get upset.”

Damn.

What do you think?

Tomorrow: Is the biological clock real or just magazine industry and crack-science bullshit?

In “The Impatient Clock“, Yona is a magician who quit magic after a miscarriage and decides children shouldn’t have imaginations. They should be taught reality and the sciences right off the bat and not be taught to believe in Santa Claus or imaginary places, people, or anthropomorphized caricatures of love.

Why set children up to take them down, is the rationale. What joy or benefit is there for all those involved when kids learn from their parents that ol’ Claus is going to get them something or whatever, until the inevitable day comes when the parents are caught by the upset child(ren) in the middle of the night; or telling them about underground families of trolls; or telling them about the Easter Bunny; or faeries or anything magical?

I’ve always thought it’s quite related to the same reason for which grown people will pay top-dollar to watch David Copperfield or David Blaine or Criss Angel or Penn and Teller: amazement does crazy things to people. It opens a little door in your head. Big or small, I think people like to know and feel and maybe witness some kind of an unexpected otherness. Because then, who knows — WHAT ELSE can be possible?

There’s a bit of a magic trick tucked into the story arc of “The Impatient Clock”. Figure it out. The world needs more womagicians.

For those of you interested in learning something new to fuck with your friends, impress a date, blow some time or make your parents mad about missing change or table utensils, here’s some magic tricks for shits and giggles.

But first, nothing about magic would start off right without a quote from one of the best damn magic movies ever made: The Prestige.

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called ‘The Pledge’. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called ‘The Turn’. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call ‘The Prestige’.”

Video tutorials on card and coin tricks and other random stuff on PubTricks.

The classic, sawing a woman in half. Frankly, I think there’s more adventure in sawing a man in half … Pity the guys who volunteer for (or perform) these tricks aren’t hot, heheh.

Babies, Babies, Babies, BABIES, BABIES!!!!!!!!!!!

Children all over the world are orphans, lose their families, get sold, get bought, fall ill, get lost — whatever sad fate that robs them of familial connection — there are children all over the world who wish they had a family or even one caring adult (doesn’t have to be a traditional “parent” setup) in their lives. You never know how some love and encouragement can help someone… There’s food shortages. Disease outbreaks. Myriad other things that make me think Momma Earth is saying, “STOP REPLICATING!”, and yet some people want LOTS of children. LOADS of children.

WHY?

Inevitably we will find ourselves talking about Nadya Suleman so I’ll just start with her to get her Guy Smiley likeness out of my face for this week. The writer at Childfree Clique said it best: “[Nadya] is batshit fucking crazy.”

CC makes a good point later on though — some people are obsessed with the fact that they CAN make more people. But they don’t seem to understand that the babies are indeed, PEOPLE. That need. That depend. That will eventually grow. As the world learned of Nadya’s madness, she kept citing that she had an awful childhood and that she wanted to give her children the best of what she could provide, etc. Fine. However, if you’re going to try and “make up” for what your childhood lacked, realize that you can’t do that without getting YOURSELF STRAIGHTENED OUT first, or your children, which you bore with the intent to bless, will suffer. And resent the fuck out of you.

Now I know this doesn’t always happen. Plenty of people who come from fucked up pasts have gone on to be good parents. The majority, however, don’t. As Leo tells Yona in my story, “kids aren’t bandaids.” They’re people with their own lives and even if you’re the parent, guess what — they don’t exist to serve or fix anything FOR you.

The seemingly “perfect” megafamilies like The Duggars (or as I call them, the Mormon Mob) are a different story. I found an interesting opinion on an old blog entry from “Thoughts of a Regular Guy“, where he pretty much states that the Duggar’s business is their own. Apparently they’re not relying on the government to foot their clan’s bill, the eldest children helped the dad build their house, the kids grow their own food, etc. Some people have worried that the kids won’t get enough love from the parents but the Regular Guy stresses that they’ll have unique relationships with each other as siblings — love needn’t just come from the almighty mom-and-dad routine. And I agree with that. But there’s something about the Duggar’s that just has NOT seemed right to me from the get-go.

An entry called “America’s Creepiest Family” addresses several of my concerns with this set up. Read through the comments for the real meat. Most people commend them for being good Christians and the like. A user called tiger1981 blows up some research they did from some place or another, and cites financial and religious shenanigans on the part of the Duggars. An inevitably anonymous user calls them a cult. Frankly, for me, it’s the mental inbreeding that looks like it’s going on … is a bit weird.

Be fruitful and multiply, to paraphrase the bible, is what a lot of religious folks follow. I always say it’s better to help one’s fellow man and take in lost and lacking souls.

I’m also a firm believer in potential parents being required to take psychoemotional evaluations before having or adopting their first kid. Cuz what the fuck — WHY do we need stories like these in our world? Kids in cages… fuck. And let’s not forget gems like fathers who have kids with their daughters and variations on that kind of story. If you missed it, there was a guy in Colombia with a similar story to the Fritzl case, only he didn’t lock the woman in a fucking hole for 20+ years.

And people hide behind God, then blame God for standing there, why? The Devil has less to complain about in the scapegoat department than God, that’s for sure.

“Fucker’s settin’ up franchises” — Tyler Durden

Then we get folks like this, who have a bijillion kids with a bijillion women. Why?

With the exception of dudes like the franchise man, and evolutionary theories a lot more people seem to hide under and behind lately (like evolution-focused reasons for why high heels make sense), it comes down to the fact that an alarming amount of people swear that the family dream situation will make them happy. This April 2009 article calls bullshit on that, and so do I. Here’s a fun snippet:

Why do we have such a rosy view about parenthood? One possible explanation for this, according to Daniel Gilbert (2006), is that the belief that ‘children bring happiness’ transmits itself much more successfully from generation to generation than the belief that ‘children bring misery’. The phenomenon, which Gilbert says is a ‘super-replicator’, can be explained further by the fact that people who believe that there is no joy in parenthood – and who thus stop having them – are unlikely to be able to pass on their belief much further beyond their own generation. It is a little bit like Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest. Only the belief that has the best chance of transmission – even if it is a faulty one – will be passed on.

As Ali G. would say, full real.

Be happy with yourself, your life, your circumstance first. Add on to your wisdom and your talents, your experiences and your life — so you have much more to pass on to your offspring when you have your kid(s) or adopt. Because in the end, having kids should also be about bringing about changes and progression. The real magic in our existence is in wonder, discovery, imagination and enrichment, and all the wonderful places we can go, and people we can become.

Til then, remember this poor fuck should you get tempted to take the easy way out and pop out a few to help fix things at home:

Tomorrow: The “dark side” of magic and the “dark side” of the womb. No not the moon — the womb.

Ah, the weirdest story I’ve ever written, “The Impatient Clock”, as found in Women in Strange Places: Stories. Contrary to popular belief it’s not a reflection of what I wish on the Octomom. But it does raise some questions about parenthood, and the concept of woman being a channel and a medium.

Video intro and excerpt below. Get ready for a controversial roller coaster ride of topics, and some magic tricks thrown in … for the kids.

At break time Yona ran to the bathroom before the line formed. As she felt her body drain into the toilet, she thought about what she and Leo, her half-brother, could make for dinner.

Nora was her usual ride to and from the factory. Yona had forgotten that come quitting time she would be stranded, and she didn’t want the manager, Mr. Pitin, to find out. She hated the way he looked at her from the window in his office. She didn’t want him to offer.

She called Leo, waking him out of his early-evening nap, and begged to him for five minutes to come pick her up.

The windshield wipers fended off the fat drops of rain. Yona sat with her purse on her lap and her ankles crossed. She smiled. Leo caught this from the corner of his eye.

He cleared his throat and said, “No, Yona. The car will be wet for days. You know how this piece of shit is.”

“I can’t help it – ”

“Yeah, yeah. You love the way rain feels on your face.”

“Right.”

“Well do it when we get home. I’m not going to spend time and money drying out this car because you wanted to stick your head out the window in a downpour.”

The grey-on-grey industrial neighborhood smeared off the car windows and mirrors. As they got to their neighborhood the streets were lined by red-brick apartment buildings with rusty black fire escapes.

Yona gave a sigh as she walked in the door.

“How was work?” Leo asked, locking the door behind them.

“Eh.”

Leo gave a faint smile. “I don’t know what to cook.”

He moved his wide, tall body into the kitchen, snapping at his suspenders in thought. A few of his oversized “magic quarters”, the ones he planned to pull from behind a child’s ear later, fell out from the folds of the elastic.

The second kitchen light was out again. The yellow light of an old bulb strained to cover the entire room.

Yona went down the hall. She passed dusty bookshelves and Leo’s collector’s items in boxes that were worthless beyond sentimental value. There was still a heap of old, empty metal cages in the living room, where unlucky animals had once lived.

She came back into the kitchen, saying, “Leo, why are the cages still there?”

“Because I haven’t moved them.” Leo set the quarters on the counter and dropped his suspenders off his shoulders. He began to chop tomatoes. “I’m going to make pasta and meat sauce. Good?”

“Sure.”

“Easy enough. I have a show tonight, got a new trick I wanna practice one more time before I go on.”

Yona rolled her eyes.

“I’m gonna lie down in a box, then come out through a door that’ll be on stage. Just a door with a frame, in three seconds. I hope that psycho assistant of mine shows up, it’ll be a tough one to do on my own.”

Yona sat up on the kitchen counter. There was a hole in her black tights. “Leo,that’s a tired trick.”

“Not the way I’m going to do it. What do you care, you’re out of the family business now.”

Yona shrugged.

“What’s wrong? You look angry or something.”

Yona began to play around with one of the silver knives.

Leo wiped his right hand on a towel and reached into his back pocket. He brought his hand up to Yona in a fist, moved his fingers a little bit, and seven beautiful paper flowers popped out. He laughed hard at Yona’s scowl and set the flowers beside her. He continued chopping.

“God you’re a bitch Yona.”

“Pulling rabbits out of hats and flowers from the thin air of your back pocket doesn’t do anything for anyone.”

“Oh stop. It’s not all we do. You had one hell of a disappearing act for a long time. And the melting lady was a hit. That one gave me nightmares. And all the rabbit tricks…”

“Yes, the rabbit tricks. The one I accidentally killed in front of that poor little boy was just perfect.” Yona shook her head. “Never again. It’s a sham. It’s a lie.”

“See, you say that as if what we do is supposed to be taken seriously! People know it’s not actually happening. But the fact that it looks like it does makes it fun. Pretending. Imagining. Imagining if we could bend the world to do as we wished … Contrary to Yona-ian belief, people do enjoy being lied to. They pay for it. I mean bankers and therapists for god’s sake! They make a living out of it! You had a great show. You just got spacey.”

“So embarrassing.” Yona grazed the tip of her finger along the knife edge, remembering the days in her teenage years and early twenties when she was The Amazing Yona.

Leo looked at her. “It’s either do magic, work at the factory, or buck up and leave town. I know you can’t imagine what else you could be doing with yourself.”

“OW!” Lost in thought, Yona had sliced the tip of her forefinger with the knife. She dropped it into the sink and hopped off the counter.

“See? Spacey,” Leo said. “You were bred to be a magician. Remember our crazy family tree?”

Yona ran her finger under the cold tap. “Magicians on both sides of the family. Please, Leo. That’s not what I want. I know what I want.”

Leo sighed.

“I want a baby.”

“Well find a man who wants one too and you’ll be nine feet wide in no time.”

“Don’t make fun!”

“You’re too much of a realist to have kids. You can’t do magic tricks in front of them. Isn’t that a hint? You need your imagination back.”

“Ugh!”

“What the hell do you want a kid for?”

Yona shrugged. She knew Leo wouldn’t understand. She decided to keep the secret about her miscarriage. That pregnancy was the one that had made her want to leave magic in the first place. “I dunno. I think my clock is ticking.”

“You’re only twenty-eight.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t have a clock.”

“You’re twenty-eight. Get your damn life in order.”

“You’re forty-four. Get your life in order! I want one so bad I faint when I’m near a kid. I don’t think my body cares what’s going on around it. It’s got its own plans. It always does.”

“Yona. For once in your life, take my advice. Don’t be another one of those baby machine bitches having kids like it’s their duty in this world. If you have one, you have it because you want it. You definitely don’t have one because your body says so! Do you know the things I’d be doing if I listened to what my body wanted all the time? The world would be on fire!”

“Oh what do you know about it. You don’t have a womb!”

“I’m trying to stop you from making a mistake. I’m not helping you raise that kid.”

“Come on. Every kid needs an uncle.”

“I’m not your brother,” Leo said.

“You’re my father’s son. Close enough!” Yona jumped off the counter and dug through her pockets for her cigarettes. “Be nice.”

“No. I’m tired of being nice to you and your womb. Kids aren’t band-aids. Once you have one you’re gonna just want another because the first one’ll grow.”

“You just don’t like children.”

“I like them when they’re not mine. And when they’re appropriate to the mother’s sanity. You having a kid and still living with me will make that kid basically mine. And you’re insane. And I have a social life.”

Yona rubbed the top of her head. “I should grow my hair long again.”

“Then do it. Maybe it’ll help find you a husband instead of wanderin’ around with that short chop cut you have.”

“I’m gonna smoke.”

“Open the window. I don’t want my sauce smelling like cancer. And don’t take any from that purple pack.”

“I can’t believe you’re still using trick cigarettes.”

Yona passed the basket of laundry she had forgotten to put away again. She opened the living room window high. Leo called it the “scary window” because it was the only one that didn’t have a safety rail or part of a fire escape outside of it. Yona loved it. It gave a clean, unobstructed view of their boring part of town. It didn’t offer reality cut up through metal rails.

She sat at the windowsill, with one leg tucked under her and the other swinging against the inside wall, her bare heel next to the light socket.

The rain outside fell steady and yellow in the streetlight. She stuck her head out and looked upward, loving the feel of the cold drops landing on her cheeks and on her lips.

A great, heavy mother pigeon, coming back from her last round of food hunting for the evening, nearly collided with another bird when both were surprised by Yona’s sudden appearance out the window.

The mother pigeon’s feet grazed Yona’s forehead. She was startled by the feeling of a claw and a glimpse of a dark wing in her eyes. She felt it brush over her nose. In that moment she leaned back hard to get her face away from the bird, forgetting about her position at the window, and fell out, back first, into the eight floors of night below.

Yona woke in a massive grass field, wearing a long navy tunic. She was surrounded by dandelions in the breeze, birds, butterflies, grasshoppers, apple trees and squirrels. She got to her feet in a start and scanned around the idyllic scene.

“Where the hell am I?” she mumbled to herself. “Leo?!” she called. “This isn’t funny, what is this?!”

She turned in a circle, looking at the gorgeous expanse of nature around her. The air was hot and smelled of soil and flowers.

“Hello!”

Her confusion bled quickly into fear. The complete memory of where she had just been came back to her. She had fallen out of her window at night, yet around her it was bright and beautiful – it looked like the first day that had ever occurred on earth.

Assuming she was dead, Yona lied down and wailed. She mourned everything she didn’t get the chance to do, and how much she would miss Leo and the rest of the family. She wondered what kind of children she would have had. She wondered why God had chosen to take her so early, and in such a way!

She imagined poor Leo in tails, top hat and boxers, talking to the police in the living room about how many damn times he told her not to sit at the window like that.

But Yona was most certainly not dead. She failed to see a bit of thread poking out of her nail from the mini-accident that morning at work, and the maroon cut on her finger, from when she was playing around with the knife while she talked to Leo.

At the top of the hill she looked around to see more ongoing expanse of green nature. A few miles away she saw a dense wood, and beyond it, a perfect series of snowy mountains.

At the bottom of the hill on the other side was a wooden house that stretched far back into the tall grass surrounding it. It looked like a hallway with a roof and a beautiful front porch and front door. Every window was framed by stained glass and marble. Wind chimes and weather vanes glistened and sang.

She wondered if this was really heaven.

She approached the house slowly as she came down the steep hill, fearing she would trip her bare feet on rocks hidden in the grass. But her path was smooth and soft, all the way to the house. When her feet got to the eight steps of the front porch, she smelled the wood, hot and sweet in the sun. The handrails were adorned with woodcuts of smiling children.

Once at the front door she didn’t know to knock or to just come in. She imagined her guardian angel and relatives and all the dead rabbits she accidentally killed, waiting inside to greet her.

There was no doorbell. Her mouth fell open when she saw herself in the oval glass set in the door. Her skin glowed with health.

Yona knocked on the door. She didn’t hear anything from inside. She knocked again. Silence. She walked over to the end of the porch, passing a wicker-backed rocking chair and a small table. She tried to look in through the window but could barely make out the insides of the house.

She turned the corner of the porch and saw that the house went back a lot farther than she’d observed from the hill. It was almost as if the house had grown in the time it took her to come toward it. Along the sides of the house were large, circular glass windows. None of them offered a view into the home.

Back at the front door she found that it was now open.

Out of a sudden sense of apprehension, Yona turned around and looked behind her. Nothing else had changed. The hill was still the hill out front, the mountains and woods were still in the distance. Nature was still perfection around her.

“Hello?” she called in to the house.

She heard plates and utensils clanging.

For being heaven, she thought, whoever was there wasn’t a very gracious host.

Yona walked in slowly. Four red-velvet loveseats were angled around a wooden table with a pair of Tiffany lamps on top. Rich, burgundy rugs covered sections of the glossy floor.

“Um … my name is Yona, I – I’m lost.”

She looked around at the walls. They were empty save for a few miniscule paintings of the nature outside. A grandfather clock in the far corner announced the arrival of three o’clock.

In the doorway to the kitchen she saw a beautiful, soft-yellow curtain that was parted and tied to dull hooks on either side of the frame. It was a yellow that reminded Yona of a nursery; the neutral color for a baby that didn’t speak to its gender, only the pleasure of its existence.

She touched the silk-and-mesh fabric and smiled at the hints of glitter in it. She walked into the combination dining room and kitchen.

She found a heavy woman there, seated at the far end of an oval table. The table was gigantic and old. It looked like a relic from a castle. In front of the woman was an oversized wooden bowl that overflowed with maroon and tan colored hunks. A wooden spoon poked out of it.

Yona would have greeted her but she was utterly shocked, because this woman’s face was completely covered by her hair. It was blacker than black, thicker than thick; each strand was the width of at least fifteen strands of Yona’s hair. The woman had it combed down the front of her face and then formed into a braid near where the start of her chin would be. The massive braid snaked along the table, and fell off the side of it to the stone and tile floor.

“M – Ma’am?” Yona said lowly. She was still staring at the length of the braid.

The woman was silent. She grabbed the spoon. Her other hand went out in front of her, slowly, palm up, inviting her to sit at the other end of the table.

Yona looked around and saw no one else near by, no pots or pans hot on the stove. She looked at the table again, and saw that a chipped porcelain bowl and a place setting had appeared at the seat across from the woman.

“What’s going on here?” Yona said. “This is – this is insane, where am I?”

The woman moved her hairy arm and fat hand toward her face, and lifted the start of the braid slightly, as she lowered her face to the bowl. The braid now completely obscured any clue of this woman even having a face, and her hand went down to her lap.

“Lady? Are you listening? Hello? Are you deaf under there?”

Yona took a few paces toward her but then took them back and fell into the seat the woman had offered her. She stared in horror at what the woman was eating.

The maroon and tan hunks in the bowl were fetuses. One of them had flipped out of the bowl as the woman shoveled spoonful upon spoonful into her unseen mouth. The fetuses looked baked or mildly toasted; their skin was tight around their would-be bodies, their vestigial arms and oddly-shaped heads were crisp. Yona could hear a slight crunch after each spoonful went into the woman’s mouth.

“Lady! What are you doing!!!” Yona screamed.

When she took the breath to scream she caught the scent of the contents of the bowl in front of her. It was a white soup that smelled distinctly of wet soil.

Yona stuck her spoon in and lifted it, watching the goop drip and slide back down toward the bowl. She became repulsed, realizing that the stuff moved and looked like semen.

The woman stopped eating. She sat up slowly and Yona could feel the woman watching her. The bowl was empty.

The woman began to deflate and shrink, inch by inch. Her hair retreated into her scalp as if it was being reeled in. Yona sprang from the table and slammed herself against the wall, screaming. The woman bled a little as the hair on her arms pulled into her flesh. Her nails grew long, her grey rag of a dress became a glittering black sheath. Her hair shrank and pulled back until it was the same length and cut as Yona’s.

The woman had Yona’s face. Her eyes had no iris or pupil.

Yona ran out of the kitchen and down the endless hallway ahead of her.

She looked behind her and saw her blank-eyed self chasing her with an axe in hand.

Yona stupidly came to a stop in disbelief. The woman swung at her with the axe. Yona ducked and watched the axe get stuck in the wall. She turned and took off running again while the woman tried to yank it out.

“You fed me!” the woman screamed behind her. “They are mine!”

The woman fiercely chased after Yona, swinging the axe closer and closer to the back of her neck, each time getting it stuck into the wall with the ferocity of her swing, yet she’d be right back within steps of Yona as if she had never paused.

To Yona’s terror, she saw that in a few yards the hall would come to an end. There was nowhere to go except out the window.

The woman grabbed her by the back of her tunic and shoved her forward, so that Yona hit the end wall with a tremendous force. Yona sat up against the wall, dizzy and crying.

“Who are you!” Yona shrieked. She pulled her knees up against her chest.

The woman knelt in front of her and held the axe edge to her throat. Yona couldn’t look at her for more than a few seconds at a time. She couldn’t believe that her own face was looking back at her, with no eyes to speak of, with a voice that was like a collection of sighs and groans.

She ripped the side of Yona’s tunic and shoved her knees apart.

“What do you want!”

The woman brought her face to her left ear. “You fed me!”

“Fed you? Fed you what?!”

“The children. The promises, your thoughts. You will never bear those children. They are conceived in my home. I will never deliver them to you!”

Yona looked at the woman’s arm and neck and the raised veins that moved beneath them. It was like her blood was swelling inside her. Through the windows she noticed a change in the light. The sky had become like charcoal, yet the grass and the flowers maintained the same bright colors as if the sun were still shining on them.

In one forced, painful move, the woman pushed her hand deep inside Yona’s vagina and pulled out her uterus. She twisted and yanked to rip the remaining tissue, and then sat back onto the floor to eat it in front of Yona. The taste seemed to bring incredible relief to the woman, as she lifted her face and smiled a peaceful, genuine smile like a child eating so much candy.

Welcome to Nine Weeks of Strange’s 3rd story, “Swim”, a story about a recovering alcoholic and the dark secrets she learns about her brother upon his death. This is the most popular story in the book so far, per reader reactions and so on, and it is my favorite of the collection as well.

Ice water fell from the sky at around four o’clock. I told George to meet me at the bar that was next to my hotel. It was an after-work bar where people came to wish they’d never been employed. I took a booth in the back and watched it rain for an hour.

When four met five I had a glass of heady ale in front of me. As I chugged it I looked up and saw George walk in through the neon and sticker door.

“Good to see you again,” George said. He kissed me on the cheek and sat down. His car keys sounded like broken wind chimes when they hit the table.

“Hi George.”

“How are you?”

I hated when people asked me that. I shrugged it off and looked around me, to say, what’s it look like?

“Are you having anything?”

“No, I don’t drink.”

It was so hard for me to make conversation with a stranger. I used to be so good at it when I was still working in sales.

But once that last beer kicked in, I knew where to start.

“Who are you and how do you know my brother?”

He smiled. “George Taylor. I’m thirty-three. I’m from upstate New York. My parents were missionaries. That a good start?”

“Sure.”

“Swimming is my life. I love it. I met Elliot when I was out one day at the lake. He was the only person there, he was sketching. It was at the end of winter, just barely spring, and the water had a nice bite to it.”

I listened as his voice painted a wonderful picture for me: my darling Elliot sketching the rusted metal trees of winter, calm as could be.

“Well, I wasn’t familiar with the lake and just jumped into any old spot. There were a ton of rocks there and I banged my head, knocked myself right out. Elliot saved me and we were friends ever since.” He sighed. “After a while, he went on some trip to an Indian reservation in New York, not far from where I grew up actually. When he came back he said he had to buy that house.”

“He would never, in a million years, want a house,” I said.

“Well he wanted that one. I came to live with him after me and my wife divorced. He offered me the bottom floor. That’s the way it was for about a year and a half, until he got sick.”

A year and a half. Why hadn’t Elliot told me?I tried to imagine him dealing with housework and decorating. He must have done a wonderful job.

“And he got sick last summer right?” I asked. How could I have forgotten?

“He kept complaining about his chest hurting until finally I asked my ex-sister in law to check him out. From there on out he just got worse and worse.”

I downed the rest of the beer as I ran from the image of Elliot in pain.

George leaned in and asked, “Are you alright?” He asked me in such a way that I felt in the loving company of a priest. I hadn’t felt that way since the last time I had a heart to heart with Elliot.

“Fine,” I said.

“Lynn, I know we’ve just met, but the way Elliot spoke about you all the time … I feel like I’m already close to you. Does that make sense?”

“Sure.”

“No, listen.” He leaned in closer this time and took my right hand. “I’ve traveled a lot in my life. I’ve seen and done many things for my age, met many people. There are few things that don’t change, and to me, it’s when someone’s hiding something.”

I felt as one does in a dream where they’ve shown up to work completely naked. “It’s none of your business, George. I’m fine.”

“I know I can’t force you to talk to me. That’s fine.” His dark eyes dropped for a moment and then came back to mine. “I’m sorry. I just want us to be friends. If you need someone to listen – ”

“Thanks, George, but you know what?” Don’t shove him away, don’t do it, I pleaded to myself. “My brother just died. And at every corner I turn there’s all this stuff I learn about him. I’m upset. I’m going to drink.”

Poor George. I came to find out later that this was a soft spot for him. His ex-wife had been a terrible alcoholic.

He leaned back against the seat. Silent minutes moved past us. I was fidgety as George was still. He stared at me off and on.

“Do you want to come see the house?” He asked finally. “It’s nice. Nothing fancy, but it’s nice. Really quiet. Maybe it would be good for you to spend a week or two there, with me. Maybe it would be good for both of us.”

“And the boxes?” I asked sharply. This caught him off guard, though I realized in my rising stupor that he hadn’t mentioned them.

“Well … they’ll be there for you too.”

“What’s in them?”

He shook his head. “Nothing I’m going to try and explain to you if you’re not sober. Really, if you’re going to drink the whole time you’re in town it might be best to just mail them to you – ”

“Wait a minute, who the hell do you think you are? Elliot was my brother and he left those things for me. I think I have the right to see them when I damn please!”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Lynn. I don’t want to sound so mysterious but it’s just a matter of fact. Please, for the sake of his memory, you need to be there for this. He left you some very special things. Very important things.” George rose and gave me a tender smile. His eyes were a little angry at me. “I have to go. Just tell me when you want to come by. Okay?”

I wasn’t sure what awaited me. But as near to the bottom as I was, I had to get something right. It was my duty as his sister to go be at the house, and George was right – I had to be present.

“I’m staying next door,” I said.

“I know.”

“Come get me tomorrow afternoon?”

“I’ll call you when I’m on the way over. And, just out of curiosity, do you happen to know what happened to a fish Elliot had in his room?”

“Yeah. I have it in my room. Why?”

He looked relieved when he said, “Oh good. I was worried the hospital had tossed the poor thing. I gave it to Elliot.”

I nodded without concern. It was just a fish.

“I’ll see you,” George said, and walked away.

Soon after he was gone I was alone at the bar. I felt like an old party streamer tangled in a tree limb.

If I could get anything right in my imagination about Elliot owning a house, it would be situated in the middle of nowhere. This meant I couldn’t go to the store, or for too long a walk, and I definitely couldn’t run out for something to eat.

I carried a picture of him in my purse, and I told it that my trip to the store down the street would be the last time.

I wandered the aisles for a half hour as I stared at the mad array of liquors, beers, wines, vodkas. In the long hall of fridges that housed the beer, I stared at the shiny twelve and twenty-four packs, the frosted, rotund aluminum jumbo cans, and the variations of brown, green and red bottles. It felt like these mosaics of poison were pressed against the glass, like fans of me, all wanting to get inside and ingest me.

I ended up back at the hotel room drowned in wine. At one point during my silent debauchery I thought I saw Elliot cross from the bathroom door to the closet, just around the corner. I could even smell his old cologne.

“It wasn’t your fault, get off that bottle,” I heard him say.

No, it wasn’t mine, that’s what Elliot always said. I started drinking a few years after our sister Shirley drowned in a river. I was thirteen and she was eleven. I couldn’t swim fast enough to save her. She was right at my grasp, but it was as if every time her frantic hand was within an inch of mine, the current would yank her away from me hard. I had to fight to catch up to her and not let myself get ripped away, but it was useless. I was exhausted. I could only watch as the river rolled her around in its torrents that sounded like a million windows breaking at once, and then her thrashing frame was gone.

I was depressed for several years until I discovered drinking. I drank to drown out Shirley’s screams. Then I drank to get through classes and break-ups, movies, and drives home. I drank to get to and out of work.

Now I drank because I couldn’t protect Elliot, my remaining sibling. I drank because everything was my fault.

I didn’t want George to know this. The humiliation was so deep whenever someone found me out in some parking lot or hanging off a stool at a bar. I was afraid that George wanted to be my friend. I knew that if he met the real me, he’d want to forget I was Elliot’s sister. Elliot, who had done nothing wrong to anyone, and had lived his twenty-eight years in peace.

On the way to the house, Langford’s drab streets gave way to the land surrounding it. The nothing of trees warped the horizon as the main road wandered through them. I had a dry mouth and a head a mile wide. George had bags under his eyes. After some time I made the decision to talk, even if it was just to hear the sound of my voice.

I shoved mint gum into my mouth before I spoke. I even gave a little smile.

“Where are we going?”

“The house is in a bit of a limbo. It’s not quite part of Langford, not quite part of Alter Grove. That’s the next town to the west. Usually I tell people I live in the woods.”

I nodded. “How are you today?”

“Tired. I didn’t get to swim this morning. I haven’t slept.”

“How come?”

He looked over at me periodically, saying, “Too many things on my mind. Elliot, and then comes the problem of what to do with the house. I’m not going to stay there… not for much longer. I don’t know what to do with myself anymore, you know that feeling? Sometimes I worry I’ve done it all. There’s so much in my head. I get so agitated when I don’t swim. I can’t focus.”

“Really?”

“Mmhm. It’s a necessity for me. I swim four times a day.” He leaned forward onto the steering wheel. It looked like he was trying to stretch his lower back.

“Where do you swim?”

“In the lake outside the house.”

“The house is on a lake?” I looked out the window, trying to imagine it. A house on a lake reminded me of summer and lush trees, barbecues and insect bites. Not ice.

“Oh yes.”

“Where’d he get the money?”

“I fronted it to him. He had his savings too.”

George made a left turn onto a dirt and gravel road. The house became visible immediately, along with the shore of the lake. It was an enormous stretch of glassy water. The house was modestly sized and colored, buttoned into the hilly land.

I stared at the lake, thick with cold, as it was jostled by the breeze.